Further Reading
8th October 2021
Welcome to the strange world of Henry Threadgill's Zooid, where composed structures are brought to life by the groups inimitable approach to improvisation. Matt takes a listen to the group's latest recording, Poof, out now on PI Recordings.
'Poof' is composer, saxophonist and flutist and newly-minted NEA Jazz Master Henry Threadgill's latest work with his band, Zooid, his primary musical laboratory for the last two decades.
Threadgill has returned to the symbiotic band, Zooid, the longest-running group of his half-century long career. Added together, its four members - Liberty Ellman on guitar, Christopher Hoffman on cello, Jose Davila on tuba, and Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums, along with the leader on alto sax and flutes - have been playing with him for a total of over 75 years. These are the musicians of his inner-circle, who have dedicated countless hours to mastering the maestro's inimitable music - or at least to the extent that mastery can be achieved in music that is constantly changing and being pushed to the teetering edge.
The compositions on the album are described by Threadgill as sonatas or concerti: "Come and Go" for saxophone and cello; "Poof" for saxophone and guitar; "Beneath the Bottom" for trombone; "Happenstance" for flute and drums; and "Now and Then" for tuba and guitar. By this point, the group's reliance on the serial intervallic system that was the basis of the group's unique sound is more felt than prescribed or, as Threadgill describes it, "stripped down to the bones," relying on the musicians to fill in the rest of the corpus. All the other hallmarks of this music are here: unpredictable forms, percolating rhythms, the interwoven melodic strains; there's really nothing else remotely like it. The best part of it all is that Zooid is the one platform where one still gets to hear Threadgill really play. His keening saxophone wail retains that unmistakable gutbucket blues feel, with no small measure of church thrown into the mix.
